WIDGEON 
187 
not become indolent or uninteresting. Though a favorite bird in Europe and 
America, and very commonly kept in both public and private gardens, it cannot be 
called a ready breeder. In the London Gardens it bred less frequently than many 
other species (P. L. Sclater, 1880), and Rogeron (1903) admits that after twenty 
years he had not succeeded in inducing his birds to lay. C. Smith (1881) seems to 
have been one of the first amateurs to breed it to any extent in England, and Sir 
Ralph Payne-Gallwey was also successful. In Germany amateurs appear to have 
reared them not uncommonly at least as early as 1828 (Naumann, 1896-1905). In 
recent years many have been bred at Netherby (Cumberland) by Sir Richard 
Graham, where they are said to have laid almost as freely as Teal (Gladstone, 1910). 
Mr. Wormald and Mr. St. Quintin as well as Lord William Percy have also reared 
many, and in Holland Mr. Blaauw has been as successful with Widgeon as with 
most other species he has attempted. 
In England the price for live birds has always been very reasonable, averaging 
perhaps 25 shillings a pair, and fine hand-reared ones can even now be purchased 
for about 40 shillings. We used to buy them here in America for $12.00 to $15.00 
per pair, sometimes less. The species has been bred in America by Mr. Henry Cook 
of Woodbury, Long Island (New York), and by Mr. John Cox at Brewster, Massa- 
chusetts. 
An interesting method of artificially increasing the breeding stock of several 
species of wild ducks has been carried out in England, at Netherby, by Sir Richard 
Graham. The fowl are caught in considerable numbers in decoys, their wing-feathers 
are clipped and they are kept through the winter in enclosures. In the spring, 
a short time before the breeding season, the stumps of the primaries are pulled 
and the birds returned to their enclosures. In three or four weeks they will be fly- 
ing, but the season is then so advanced that the migratory impulse is subordinated 
to the breeding instinct. Ducks so managed are much more likely to breed than 
are pinioned birds, and much of the recent increase of breeding Widgeon, Gadwall 
and Shovellers in the British Isles is doubtless due to this and other practices carried 
out on a large scale. 
Another famous Netherby experiment made by Sir Richard Graham consists of 
crossing Widgeon, Pintail and Gadwall, with Mallard and then crossing the re- 
sulting hybrids back to pure stocks, until a nearly pure home-bred local stock 
has been produced. In the case of the Widgeon the Netherby stock was started in 
1903, and when Millais reported upon it in 1913, there were at least a thousand 
there. 
The Widgeon is long-lived in captivity but not exceptionally so. The average 
duration of life of forty-one specimens kept in the London Gardens was about five 
years, the maximum being about thirteen (P. C. Mitchell, 1911). The Giza Zoologi- 
cal Gardens at Cairo, in their report for the year 1921, list one specimen which had 
